


Made By Our Mistakes

by tarysande



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-16
Updated: 2012-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-29 16:06:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarysande/pseuds/tarysande
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are words yet to be spoken. A final conversation between Hawke and Anders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Made By Our Mistakes

Afterward, with the stink of burning city and burning lyrium and burning flesh still defiantly tainting every breath, Kiara Hawke drinks.

Her house is whole, but empty. The façade has been defaced and she’s certain at least some of the marks are painted in blood, but the sturdy door still stands on its hinges and most of the windows are unbroken. For some reason this disturbs her. For years she has been carefully building a life centered around this pleasant house in this foreign city, and tonight has ended it all. Her house ought to be a smoldering wreck, like the rest of Kirkwall. That it is not seems… unjust.

But she cannot think the word _justice_ now. Not yet. Not sober.

So Hawke scours her empty, whole house for liquor. She finds half a dozen bottles of aged Antivan brandy buried under the rest of the junk she hasn’t yet sold or disposed of. The kitchen yields wine, but even with her arms full of bottles she’s afraid there’s not enough booze in the world to drown the thoughts she wants drowned.

Even Orana is gone, and Hawke has never known the little elf girl to leave the estate for anything. She hopes Orana ran of her own accord. She hopes Orana finds somewhere safe to stay and never comes back.

Part of her hopes none of them come back, but it does not matter. Not really.

She won’t be here by the time anyone comes looking.

She knows she has to run.

Later, though. After the drinking.

#

This isn’t how victory is meant to feel. Even three bottles of wine in, she’s pretty certain of that. She has heard tales of the Archdemon’s defeat, after all. She has heard stories of the woman who slew the monster and saved the world, earning herself a king and a kingdom and the title _Hero_. Hawke dreads the tales they will tell of her, of this night. She has been Champion of Kirkwall for years, and never has the honorific seemed more absurd. Cullen’s intervention might buy her a day or a week, but there will be no cheering crowds or fancy parties for the survivor—or is she the instigator? the distinction grows blurry—of tonight’s debacle. It is risky to stay even now, but templars or no templars she will spend a last night in her home before she flees.

She has no idea where she’ll go. Certainly not Starkhaven; she does not doubt Sebastian’s vow of vengeance, even if it was somewhat misguided. Antiva seems a bad choice, given her previous dealings with the Crows. The King of Ferelden had intimated she’d always be welcome _home_ , but she isn’t sure the offer stands if she arrives with holy war in tow. No. He’ll have trouble enough without her adding to it. They all will. Anders has seen to that. Perhaps she’ll flee to Orlais, to hide in plain sight. That might do.

Putting her head in her hands, she feels the room spin, but the thoughts do not stop and the darkness of the palms against her eyes does nothing to erase the horrors running rampant across her eyelids. All her memories are tinted red. The red of her adopted city burning once more, the red of Meredith’s mad eyes and lyrium-idol sword, the red of mages turning to blood magic again and again and _again_.

The red of the terrible, terrible power that had leveled the Chantry and killed the Grand Cleric.

Even though she was an unwitting, unwilling participant, _accessory to murder_ is a terrible mantle to wear. It is far heavier than Champion of Kirkwall ever was.

Hawke knows she ought to be surprised when she looks up from her hands and sees Anders kneeling at the cold hearth. Brief sparks dance at his fingertips, lighting the waiting kindling, but even after the fire is lit he remains on his knees, head bowed, neck bared to her.

She knows she ought to be surprised, but instead she simply feels weary and sad and old beyond her years.

She thinks, _I could kill him here and no one would know. No audience. Just the silent, ignominious death he deserves._ That _would be justice._

But her bow is not to hand and there are words yet to be spoken.

Without looking at her, Anders says, “I am glad you were victorious, Hawke. All the city is talking of it.”

Bitterly, she retorts, “Of course you’re glad. I’ve been a good little pawn for you, haven’t I?”

If the deep lines around Anders’ eyes are any indication, she is not the only one who has been aged by tonight’s horror. He barely manages to meet her gaze before he turns his face once again to the fire.

“We’re _friends_ , Kiara. I never intended—”

“No,” she says calmly—more calmly than she feels; she thinks it must be an effect of the wine. Her limbs feel heavy, but her thoughts are clear. “I have had quite my fill of your words. It is your turn to listen to me, Anders. Perhaps you failed to notice, but we have not been friends for quite some time, if ever we were friends at all. I believe I can date it exactly, if you’d like me to. Friends don’t lie to each other. Friends don’t resort to blackmail to get what they want. And friends answer honestly the questions asked of them, even if those questions have difficult answers. Perhaps _especially_ if those questions have difficult answers.”

She watches him prepare to defend himself. It’s so predictable. How often has she witnessed this transformation? His shoulders straighten and his back stiffens. A muscle jumps in his cheek as he clenches his jaw. His eyes narrow. He crosses his arms over his chest. Before he can speak, she continues, “I know what you’re going to say. And you’re right. I wouldn’t have understood. I still don’t understand. I don’t want to understand. _I will never understand._ Until the day I die—likely sooner rather than later, if the templars have their way—I will regret not pushing harder for the truth. I will regret not knowing enough to stop you. Perhaps you deluded yourself into thinking me a friend, but friends trust each other, Anders, and I have never trusted you. Your story is too full of inconsistencies. Even I can see that.”

“This isn’t about me. The mages deserve—” he begins to protest, singing the same old song he’s always sung, but she silences him with a swift, cutting motion.

“I supported the mages,” she retorts sharply. “If you had _listened_ to me speak instead of nursing your frustration because I wasn’t doing things exactly as you wished, you would have heard me support the mages time and time again. The only thing I refused was to capitulate to extremism.”

She wants to close her eyes, to turn away from the raw, almost mad look on Anders’ face, but she’s afraid she’ll see images of the monster Orsino had become. Worse, she’s afraid she’ll see the light going out of her mother’s eyes. Necromancy. Blood magic. Insanity. The First Enchanter had seemed so reasonable, especially standing opposite mad Meredith, but he’d betrayed her trust. Accessory to murder.

She had supported the mages for love of her sister, and because the extreme measures of the Rite of Annulment were inhumane, not because Anders ranted and raved and frothed at the mouth. Maker’s breath, she’d supported the mages in _spite_ of Anders. Damn the templars. Damn their Rite. And damn the mages, too.

Much as she wants to wash her hands of them all, she knows no amount of scrubbing will ever, ever completely remove the stains.

Swallowing to moisten her suddenly dry throat, she adds, “There’s a thing called diplomacy, Anders, and you’re the one who spat on it time and time again. Elthina was being careful so as not to incite unnecessary trouble, but she would have listened. I believe she would have listened. How does it help the plight of mages to kill the only reasonable person in Kirkwall? Was that your aim? To undermine the possibility of rational discourse?”

Coldly, he replies, “Talk is cheap. Talk changes nothing.”

“And murder changes everything, yes. Thank you for clarifying that.”

“You keep using that word, but yet you didn’t kill me when you had the chance. If you truly thought my methods wrong, you could have executed me. No one would have stopped you.” His lips twist in a sneer. “But then, you never could choose sides, could you, Hawke? No wonder you weep for the Grand Cleric. The two of you would have waited and talked and taken your tea with sugar until every mage in Kirkwall was dead, or Tranquil.”

Tilting her head until the back of her skull rests against the warm wood of her chair, Hawke asks mildly, “Have you come to finish the job then?”

His robes rustle. She thinks she’s managed, at last, to startle him. After too long a pause he says, “It was never about you. You were collateral damage. In a way… in a way, so was she.”

Cobwebs hang from the ceiling, glinting in the golden light of the fire. She wonders how long they’ve been there. Perhaps the house is already certain of its fate; it is already fading. “I didn’t spare your life because I thought your cause just or because we were friends once. I spared you because I didn’t want to hand your cause a convenient martyr to rally around. And because I had no wish to be painted the villain in the tales they’ll tell of you.”

She twists her head just enough to see the stricken expression slide across his face. “That’s your problem, Anders,” she admonishes. “You never think through the consequences of your actions. Tell yourself whatever helps you sleep at night, but knowing what I know now? I think you refused to tell me your plans for the Chantry not for my own good, not because you wanted to protect me, but precisely because you knew I’d think through the consequences for you. I’d have asked questions you could not answer. I’d have doubted you, and you did not want to acknowledge even the possibility of doubt.”

Anders says nothing.

Sighing, she puts her hands to the arms of the chair and pushes herself upright. The room remains surprisingly steady. “You came to congratulate me on my victory, and you have done so. I’d like to thank you, but the triumph is bitter, and I’m afraid it’s not one to be savored. I cannot think what other possible reason you might have to intrude on my solitude. I can only hope you have not come seeking understanding or, Maker forbid, absolution. We have set the world alight tonight, you and I. The Maker only knows what will rise from the ashes. We have to live with that.”

“Hawke…”

“Leave now,” she commands, ignoring the pain in his eyes. Once upon a time she’d allowed herself to be taken in by his pain, and she has regretted it ever since. Not for herself. Hers is the least of the lives destroyed by this one man’s incendiary, all-consuming pain. Like a fox in a trap, he has long since gnawed off his own leg in his desperate bid for freedom. When she’d agreed to take the little fox in, she’d had no idea how rabid it was. She knows now. Justice might have been the word spoken, but vengeance was the action taken. She will not allow herself to be taken in again. “This is the third and final time I will let you leave with your life. I think it best you disappear. If I see you again I will put an arrow through your eye before you can defend yourself, and I will make your body disappear before anyone can think to martyr you. That is my promise.”

By the determined set of his chin she thinks he will resist, protest further, but he only stares at her. The determination fades as his eyes search her face. She wonders what he sees. She wonders if, like she, he sees a stranger looking back at him. He may wear a similar mien, but this man is not the man she laughed with over drinks in The Hanged Man, or beat at cards, or fought back to back with in so many battles. This man is not the man who saved her life countless times, whose hands and whose magic brought her back from certain death more than once.

That man died when the Chantry did.

The man standing before Hawke now is the man who’d killed the one person in the entire stinking cesspit of Kirkwall she had respected, who’d cost her Sebastian’s friendship, whose actions will likely cost Aveline her captaincy and Donnic his position in the guard.

He is no friend of hers.

Even if he refuses to see the truth in anything else, she’ll be damned if he doesn’t understand _this_ before he leaves.

A particularly large log snaps in the hearth, sending a dizzying swirl of sparks into the chimney, and pulling Anders’ gaze from her at last. His eyes shine in the flare of light. She does not look too closely.

Very quietly he says, “I understand. Thank you, Kiara.”

She does not watch him leave.

After he has gone, Hawke stands before the fire he’d lit, watching the flames die until only dim embers remain. She ignores the many still-full bottles littering the floor. Liquor, and the oblivion promised by it, has lost its appeal. There is no absolution to be found in the bottom of a bottle.

Hawke is reminded of a conversation between Isabela and Anders she’d once overheard. He’d been haranguing Isabela about regrets, about the desire to fix past mistakes, to right past wrongs. _Our mistakes make us who we are_ the pirate queen had said, as though it was completely and utterly self-evident. _Would you change who you are?_

Hawke has made mistakes, and she knows it. For the most part, her mistakes have made her strong because she would not allow them to make her weak.

The entire city of Kirkwall is an object lesson in the cost of mistakes, but these mistakes have sapped the city’s strength, left it a rotten carcass torn at by the opposing extremes espoused by mages and templars, a carcass ripe to feed slavers and bandits and thieves and corruption.

Our mistakes make us who we are.

Anders murdered one voice of reason, but perhaps Hawke can be another. Perhaps this is a mantle it will not shame her to wear. Anders’ mistakes are not hers, after all. To be such a voice will not make her popular. It may shorten her lifespan drastically. It may even be too late.

The Grand Cleric had refused to leave Kirkwall, though she knew staying put her at risk. The people needed her, she said, and so she remained. People like Orana, like Sandal, like Bethany. People like her mother. People worth fighting for.

Perhaps Champion of Kirkwall need not be an empty appellation after all. Perhaps she might make the title _real_ , make it stand for something more important than a tip of the hat for services rendered.

If anyone needs a champion, an advocate, it’s Kirkwall.

To run now, she realizes, would be a mistake.

The kind of mistake that would invite weakness instead of strength, that would change her in ways she does not wish to be changed.

Placing another log in the hearth, Hawke stokes the fire until the room glows with warmth and light. She gathers the bottles and discards them. Then, standing on her chair, she reaches to the ceiling and brushes the cobwebs from the rafters.

“Sorry, house,” she says, “I’m not going anywhere.”


End file.
